Cut
by Miss Pookamonga
Summary: Tesla oneshot. "Sometimes, he just needed to feel..."


_Dear Readers,_

_This plotbunny has been plaguing me for a while now, and while I understand that it might be a bit far off the mark for some people, I hope it doesn't make poor Nikola look too much like an emotional teenager. Because that's not what I intended, and I hope that the way I wrote this gives evidence to support that point. Anyway, I'll leave you to read and hopefully research on your own--because the poor man deserved more than what was given to him in his life and the least we can do is make the effort to read his story._

_Best regards from a bookworm (and Tesla addict),_

_Miss Pookamonga aka "Pooka"_

_PS: I do not own the song by Plumb. If I did I wouldn't be writing this disclaimer._

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**_This is for all the Nikola Teslas of the world_ **

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**Cut**

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"_**I may seem crazy  
Or painfully shy  
And these scars wouldn't be so hidden  
If you would just look me in the eye  
I feel alone here and cold here  
Though I don't want to die  
But the only anesthetic that makes me feel anything kills inside…"**_

_**~from the song "Cut" by Plumb**_

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Sometimes, he just needed to feel.

To know, to be sure, to remind himself that he was still human.

And yet, at the same time, he needed something to erase all the pain, if only for a little while.

He would never admit it to anyone, but he was tired of being alone. Afraid of being alone. He had always been afraid of being alone, but he had never been able to bring himself to fully trust the people who claimed friendship. So he had isolated himself, staying cautiously at an arm's distance from those who could have filled the empty void causing chaos within him, if he had only had the courage to let them.

_She _could have filled that void.

But he was terrified.

Terrified of attachment, terrified of the excruciating pain of loss that came with it. Terrified of the possibility that she might turn on him, like so many of the others had. Terrified that love would only rip him to shards and leave him in a state of utter disrepair, as it had too often done before.

So he hid.

Ran away, cringed like a coward, trembling at the fear that gripped him tightly with the claws of a vicious monster shifting through the shadows.

A vicious monster like himself.

No, he wasn't a monster. He wasn't, he never had been, he never would be. This was part of who he was. It wasn't anything to be ashamed of, anything to be afraid of. He was proud of it, he reveled in the immense sense of power it propelled through his veins. It was the one thing that let him feel the glory that had been meant for him all along, the glory that had never been granted to him before but that he had always deserved.

But the power and the glory…despite what others thought, he didn't want those things. He didn't_ care_ about them.

He wanted something the world could never give him.

He _needed _that desperately.

But he could never have it.

No matter how hard he tried, he always felt detached from the world around him, drifting between a state of reality and a state of dreams, confusing one for the other. He never felt anchored to anything or anyone, he never felt the pull of the intricate bonds of human interaction. He never _felt _anything.

It was always just numbness, pure nothingness, and he couldn't bear the agony any longer.

It was a deathly web that had been spun for him—a web woven from the thread of a need for feeling and the thread of a need for release. Two opposites, joined together in a chaotic net drawn out to catch him when he fell, but only to catch him and entrap him in its inescapable grasp.

The world had failed him, life had failed him, love had failed him. He had failed himself.

This was the only thing he could do to make sense of it all.

Or perhaps, to escape the petrifying prospect of making sense of it all.

So he plunged the knife into his skin, drawing it across as the blood trickled ominously like rivers spelling out his doom. He knew that the wounds would heal so quickly that no one would ever see the scars. And he knew that when he screamed, no one would be there to hear him.

It was the same as always.

Sometimes, he just needed to feel.

Sometimes, he just needed to escape.

But it was never enough.


End file.
